


Attack Again at Dawn

by peridium



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Incest, Light Bondage, M/M, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-16
Updated: 2012-11-16
Packaged: 2017-11-18 19:48:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/564628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peridium/pseuds/peridium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor doesn't know where he's taking them, nor does he care to think of what his friends might say about this betrayal. All he knows is that he cannot take Loki back to Asgard, not to countless centuries of punishment and bondage. In which, at the end of The Avengers, Thor decided against using the Tesseract to take Loki home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Attack Again at Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2012 Marvel Big Bang, which has been a great deal of fun. Many, many thanks to blindmadness (at LJ) for cheerleading, handholding, and finally, betaing. And of course, to justfollowsnails for her beautiful art, about which I am still hilariously excited. Seriously, it's the coolest thing I've ever seen.
> 
> The title comes from the Great Big Sea song "Nothing But A Song."

It is only at the last second that Thor betrays his team, and they will not know of it for some time.

Loki is resigned, his features set in the stubborn acquiescence Thor knows well. He does not fight, places his hand on the Tesseract, ready to go home—

The molten energy wrenches them into nothingness and just like that, Thor changes his mind. He is unskilled with magic, but his will is considerable, considerable enough to divert their path. Thor has no planned destination, _far_ and _hidden_ the only thoughts guiding his intervention.

He registers Loki’s widened eyes, surprise and suspicion, and then he registers nothing for some time.

 

Thor’s fingers clutch at empty air, his heart pounding already as he opens his eyes to unrelenting sun and endless blue sky unlike anything found in New York City. He is still for a mere instant before he remembers and claws himself upright through the heat pressing down on him. “Loki,” he gasps out, afraid for too many reasons.

A mere foot or so away, Loki sits with disheveled hair and sand on his armor. He has made the journey, and he certainly does not look happy—that is an expression Thor knows—but he is safe. “You’re here,” Thor cannot stop himself from saying, to which Loki holds up cuffed wrists, cool gaze flicking to the chain joining them. His restraints have survived the trip as well. It is the Tesseract that has gone.

Loki’s eyebrows rise and he glances with derision at their surroundings. Sparse shrubs, gangly trees, and what may well be miles of sand. Thor can nearly hear Loki say the words _Asgard has changed, hasn’t it?_

“Loki,” Thor repeats, and he sinks onto his knees. The sand gives a little under the combined weight of his armor and his urgency. His hands go to Loki’s shoulders, slide down his arms, cup the back of his neck and hold tight. Whatever else he may be, Loki is intact. It is something for which to be grateful. “I know this is—far from where you expected.”

Loki turns his head away, surely cursing Thor that he cannot do worse to show his displeasure.

“Brother, please.” Thor swallows, sweat already prickling down his shoulders. He does not care to imagine Loki’s discomfort. “I could not see you put to centuries of torture.”

There’s a sound like a muffled laugh from behind Loki’s gag.

Thor tightens his grip on Loki’s neck. “I mean this,” he says. “I know that there is much gone wrong between us. I will not let you be so lost forever.”

Loki’s features remain calm and unreadable, and Thor closes his eyes, lets his forehead touch Loki’s. It is good to be so close to him without thinking to leap into action, without considering how best to remove him from a battlefield. Now there is only dirt and arid air and the stickiness created by the desert heat.

Thor finds himself smiling, nearly hopeful, as he shifts away. It is the hardness in Loki’s eyes that stops him. The steeliness there wrenches Thor back to the present with the recollection of deaths numbering in the hundreds.

He breathes and lets his hands drop away from Loki’s face. “I will release you in time,” he tells Loki, “but I do not trust you as I once did.”

Loki’s eyes narrow and he glances pointedly down at the gag.

“Soon,” Thor promises. He means it. “You have my word. I know that your tongue is the silver one and that I’ve never been eloquent, but I claim my right to try nonetheless.”

The disdain in the curve of Loki’s eyebrow is so familiar that Thor nearly smiles again. This setting is hardly ideal, but nothing could be. “Here, brother.” Thor stands, pulling Loki to his feet with hands at his elbows, and helps him out of the bulkiest of his armor, the motions practiced and easy. They have done this after countless battles.

Loki does not resist, though he’s suddenly small in nothing but cloth and boots, standing in the vastness of what must be the desert. He doesn’t meet Thor’s eyes and, as Thor strips to his own undershirt, he can only wonder if the old reflex to assist Thor with his armor in turn is still there. The bonds look harsh against his underarmor and the reminder of how thin he is, the darkness gathered under his eyes.

“Come,” Thor says, grasping Loki’s bony elbow. Loki makes a small huffing noise, one Thor knows indicates irritation, but he lets himself be led toward the meager shade of one of those strange little trees. “I know the heat must be unpalatable for you.”

_You’re embarrassingly stupid_ , says the incredulity on Loki’s face.

“Yes,” Thor agrees. “Perhaps you should be grateful we share no blood relation.” Something flashes in Loki’s eyes, but Thor cannot interpret this.

Before Thor can prompt him, Loki folds himself into sitting cross-legged, back against the tree. As if the heat is too much, and it may be, he shuts his eyes. The gag gleams in the sun.

Hesitant, Thor kneels before him. For a long moment he does not speak, considering the fierce creature that is his brother and trying again to understand without asking. “Loki.” He reaches to touch Loki, just brushing knuckles against the leather of a boot. “I am sorry,” he begins.

Loki tilts his head, openly mistrustful.

“I _am_ sorry,” Thor says again, his voice oddly quiet. The sand swallows his words. “I can hardly begin to understand what you feel I have done to wrong you. I only know that I have done something and that it was so dreadful you thought you could not speak to me of it as I would have hoped.”

Now Loki is listening. Thor knows him well enough to see that.

“Whatever it was, I—I wish you had felt safe in telling me. I could have prevented this—” Thor makes a demonstrative sweep of his arm, though this landscape betrays nothing of the devastation that struck the island of Manhattan. “I would ask you to explain, but there are things I must say to you first, without your clever tongue twisting what passes between you and me.”

Loki’s chin lifts, a challenge.

Words are not Thor’s domain, and it takes him a moment to meet that challenge. “You are still my brother,” he says at last. He leans closer with the illogical desire to be sure Loki understands. “You have always been my brother. I have never thought otherwise.”

Thor pauses to breathe, to steady himself with a hand on Loki’s knee. “Do not mistake me,” he says. “I am angry. I’m sure you never imagined I would _not_ be, and that part of your plan, at least, has worked, as you must have known it would. Of course it angers me to see my friends hurt, their city torn apart, all at the hand of the brother I trusted. But you _are_ my brother still.

“You cannot convince me otherwise.” He meets Loki’s icy gaze and pushes aside the renewed pang of guilt at the sight of the gag. “It does not matter what you do. It does not matter how you push me away or how many people, mortals or otherwise, you strive to hurt.” At Loki’s quirked eyebrow, he adds, “I will always try to stop you, you know. Earth is still under my protection and I am still a prince of Asgard. Just know that whether we fight as enemies or embrace as companions again, this does not change. You need not call me brother in turn, but you cannot ask me to stop.”

Loki moves quickly, throwing himself at Thor without apparent strategy.

“Brother—” It is only honed reflexes that allow Thor to take hold of him, grip his wrists just above the cuffs, and pin him with his back against the sand. “Loki,” Thor tries now, secure at least in the knowledge that his weight will restrain Loki, “I will do whatever it takes to bring you back to reason.”

Thor does not want to call it hatred, the thing burning in Loki’s expression. He is not struggling, but his whole body is tensed and he is not looking at Thor.

“Whatever it takes.” Thor wrenches Loki’s wrists down, holding them so Loki’s arms are spread as far as the chain will allow. “If you truly wish, we may fight. I believe I will win.”

Loki’s chest heaves. His jaw is clenched. He does not move again to attack, however, and as the seconds become minutes, Thor releases Loki’s hands. They curl into fists but do not move.

“As I said.” Thor pushes the hair out of Loki’s eyes. “I will have my turn. You have hurt those who I call friends and teammates, some of them more than I believe you know.”

Though Loki squirms, Thor’s hands heavy on his chest are enough to keep him in place. “I would tell you of them,” Thor says. The images are easy to call to mind, these fierce mortals in and out of costume, most so fragile but never willing to back down, and the memory draws a grin from him. “I admire the Avengers more than I can say. They are braver than I, I believe, because they are mortal.”

Loki’s on the verge of rolling his eyes, and so Thor presses on.

“Steve Rogers, the one they call Captain America—brother, I can only hope to rival his courage one day. He has no special powers and he understands Earth of the present little more than I, but surely you saw his bravery. I know there is much he fears, but he faces evil nonetheless. It’s much as we were taught.

“The metal man, too,” he says. “He would have given his life to save that city. I know he thinks himself unworthy, but he is entirely wrong.” He smiles again to recall how Tony Stark told him with barely-suppressed excitement of the grand plans he has for housing the Avengers. The team may well remain intact.

At least Loki no longer struggles. His features are blank, but he seems to absorb Thor’s words, whatever he will do with them.

So Thor tells him of the Avengers. Already there is more to tell than there is time, but he speaks of the Black Widow’s nobility despite her past and the easy partnership between her and Clint Barton. He speaks of the valiance with which Bruce Banner has learned to control the Hulk and to use a power most thought monstrous as a force for good. Hawkeye’s astounding drive to prove himself, the things about Natasha Romanoff that remind him of Sif, Captain America’s measured leadership, Iron Man’s endless cleverness.

He does not know if it will make anything better, but he feels a little more at ease for the trying. And when he finishes, his own voice raw, Loki simply looks at him. Not fighting, not just yet. Sharp hips dig into Thor’s thighs, and he has no estimate as to how long he has been talking.

The magic is simple enough even for Thor, and with a light touch and a thought, the gag is gone.

“Not even my words can set things right and you think that yours will have _any_ effect?” Loki speaks immediately, but his voice is rough after long disuse and the sound is closer to broken than to intimidating. He seems to force back a cough, licking his lips without glancing away from Thor. “Telling me stories will not make me sorry.”

“I thought it might help,” Thor says, intentionally quiet. “I know your hurt runs deeper than I realize, but—”

Loki laughs hoarsely. “You don’t understand at all, do you? You haven’t sight sharp enough to look into the depths of your own shadow. The light you cast before you is too bright for that.”

“I _don’t_ understand.” Thor is quick to agree if it will appease Loki. “I never knew that I was causing you harm.”

“No,” Loki says, “you didn’t.” A quick sadness passes over his expression. “You really are an idiot. Never, not once, have you stopped to think of those around you. It’s only Asgard that revolves around you, Thor.”

Thor wants to protest but doesn’t. “Please, brother.” He grips Loki’s shoulders harder, reminding himself that gods do not break easily. “Tell me where I’ve gone astray, if I have.”

Up close, there’s a shuttered coldness that sketches the lines of the face Thor otherwise knows so well. “You can’t fix this, thunderer.”

Loki’s voice drips honey, and that’s a part of him Thor knows too. It shouldn’t work on him, but there is very little about his brother that is as it should be. “Do you forget that I have known you for centuries, countless years more than these mortals have? I am the one who knows you for what you are,” he is continuing, “and I know your arrogance and the ignorance that is its companion. I know how you crave glory, your name whispered about the mead hall as the commoners fall to worship your strength.”

A shudder crawls down Thor’s back, following the drip of drying sweat. “I’ve changed,” he says, aware that he is holding Loki too tightly now, fingers bruisingly firm on his skin. “You know that I have. I was a child when last we were together.”

“You are still a child.” Loki spits the words as he would rotten game. “Glorious deeds do not make you a hero. You lower yourself by your preoccupation with this ugly world. Do you think you will find more admiration here than you did on Asgard?”

“I think that they _need_ me,” Thor insists.

“Oh?” Loki’s mouth twists into a smirk. “What, these wonderful Avengers with whose deeds you are so eager to regale me are too weak to protect their own realm?”

Thor hesitates. “I can silence you again,” he says.

Loki laughs. “This is too easy,” he says. “What have you brought me here for? To make ineffectual gestures toward reconciliation? To appeal to my better nature?”

Where Loki excels at twisting truth into lie and the other way around, Thor can do no more than speak true and pray for the best. “I don’t know.”

“Disappointing.”

Thor doesn’t want to let this needling affect him. He tries to think that they are children again and that Loki’s jabs are as lighthearted as they once were. “I admit that I was not thinking,” he says quietly, “but I wanted—I _want_ —to protect you. Nothing more.”

“Perhaps you hope I will find your naïveté charming.”

Thor can’t help it, touching the palm of one hand to Loki’s cheek. His brother’s rage is like the inexorable onset of frost, palpable and crackling in the dry air. “No.” He keeps himself gentle though he wants to roar, to summon lightning and set the sky ablaze to prove his intentions. “Can you mock me for meaning to keep you from the harsh justice you would face on Asgard?”

“That at least would have been honorable,” Loki says, tugging at his bonds again. He does not turn away from Thor’s touch; neither does he lean into it. “It shames you, does it not, to run from Odin as if we were children in trouble with Father again?”

“We’re beyond such things, brother.” Thor takes Loki’s hands and forces them still. “Do not think that I believe you innocent.”

“And what do you believe me?”

“Mad,” Thor says. “In need of help.”

The uneven laugh the declaration draws from Loki seems like nothing so much as confirmation of Thor’s diagnosis. “You _have_ changed,” he says. “I would have thought it impossible.”

As satisfied as he can be, Thor shifts, gets to his feet. “I’m waiting still to hear what you would say to me,” he tells Loki, who looks from this distance just as he always has, his characteristic defiance reassuring. “I believe we have time.”

Again, Loki closes his eyes. He has summoned the composure to make it appear as though he has chosen of his own will to be where he is, lying vulnerable among sand dunes with Thor keeping watch. Thor can almost believe they _are_ children again, playing at adventure.

The knobby bark of the tree against his back, Thor prepares to wait. If this is what Loki wants, he will be his brother’s protector once again. It’s slipping back into old skin, ill-fitting but still his.

 

“I meant to prove you wrong.”

The sun is lower in the sky, but sunset is far off. The air has not cooled.

“You and others,” Loki adds, perhaps taking Thor’s silence as encouragement to continue, “though of course you insisted on being wrong entirely unlike those awful friends of yours. You had to stand out even in that.”

It’s an effort not to defend the Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, but Thor manages it. “May I know what you sought to prove? Where was I so wrong?”

Loki scoffs, though it’s an older, softer derision, the kind Thor has undergone since they were boys. “They thought me weak and disloyal,” he says, “and you thought me compliant and loyal, your steadfast companion on the battlefield.”

“And—which of us was wrong?” Thor tries, struggling to follow.

“Both,” Loki says flatly. The motion it requires is hardly dignified, but he sits up before Thor can move to help. Grains of sand cling to his hair, and he crosses his legs, bound wrists set in his lap. “All of you.”

“Brother, how—”

There’s something almost baleful in Loki’s expression, his mouth set in an unforgiving line. “Even you knew I would never be a great warrior, and took pleasure in reminding me, but for too long I strove to be your—complement. You must remember the ways I tried to aid you on the field of battle.”

Thor cannot protest, remembering Loki’s deft spells and the illusions he would create to confuse their enemies.

“That would never win me admiration with the people of Asgard,” Loki says. “I made a point of studying all that I could. I learned, I listened, I observed. You, of course, never thought to pick up the same skill.”

“Study never came easily to me,” Thor admits. Always the excitement of combat had lured him away with the promise of exhilaration and, if he should succeed, glory.

“And you suffered far less for the things that did not come easily to you.”

Thor kneels again, too eager to see Loki’s expression. “You blame me?”

There is muted irritation in the twitch at the corner of Loki’s mouth. “I have lived the whole of my life in chains, bound to you,” he says, pronouncing the words slow and deliberate, “and when I seek my own path, _this_ —” He lifts his hands, wrenches them apart as far as the chain makes possible and grimaces. The metal must cut into his flesh. “This is what I receive for my troubles.”

It’s impossible to keep from moving closer or from touching a guilty hand to the metal ringing Loki’s wrist. Thor finds he cannot make eye contact, too afraid of what he might do. “If this is so,” he says at length, the concession not enough, none of his belated realizations enough, “I never knew of it.”

Loki gazes at him with clear eyes. His shoulders curve in as if he means to protect himself, from what Thor cannot imagine. “I grow tired of shackles.”

“I _can’t_ , brother,” Thor says. Loki’s skin is somehow cool to the touch, though it sports the dull sheen hours of sweat create. “You are not safe, not for yourself or for others.”

It’s growing more difficult to avoid Loki’s gaze and Thor feels slimy for it. “Do you propose to keep me this way forever, Thor?”

“Loki, please—”

“They call you a hero.”

Thor is holding Loki by the wrists again, and through the bruises and bones he can feel the quickness of his brother’s pulse. “You cannot ask me to believe that you’ve changed so profoundly so quickly.”

“Brother,” Loki says, a word he once used freely and often, “I am _weary_. No more than that.”

Thor waits, torn and angry and sorry all at once. It’s hot out, too hot out, the sun making his hair too warm on his neck and shoulders, and Loki must be suffering even more. It can’t help his temper.

When Thor looks with pleading to Loki, he receives no response.

In their shared youth, it was Thor, always, who took it upon himself to keep Loki from harm. The responsibility felt like a badge of honor from the day he met the baby whose tiny curled fingers chilled Thor throughout. _Start small_ , Frigga had said, and Thor was ever willing.

It is when Loki smiles at him in a crooked, fleeting flicker that, muttering a curse under his breath, Thor tightens his hold on Loki’s wrists, summons the memory of how this works, and watches the shackles fall into the sand.

Thor cannot say how long the desert remains quiet, only that the fervent hope that rises in his throat feels like it may choke him. Loki is raising his hands with that smile still in place, Loki is examining his fingernails, Loki is grinning—

And Thor is lying flat on his back with Loki standing over him and laughing. “I see you’ve learned nothing, beloved brother.”

Mjölnir may as well be a weight on his own chest for how heavy he feels, gaping up at Loki. “Loki, you can’t mean to—”

“I see no one stopping me.”

These are things Thor has done before, countless times, springing to his feet and summoning Mjölnir to hand, the satisfying _thwack_ of the hammer’s handle into his palm. Still the sight of Loki gives him pause, the younger brother with the cruel leer and blades of ice from his curled fists.

Loki leaves him no time for regrets. He lunges, Thor raises an arm to block, there’s a sharp coldness, and Thor gasps, derailed so quickly in his momentum. Blood seeps through his sleeve and when he touches the shallow wound there is ice crusting his fingers. Loki has vanished.

“Not this time,” Thor tells the empty air, knowing Loki can hear.

Mjölnir takes him aloft easily, the cold air higher up cutting through the flimsy protection his undershirt provides. He needn’t have bothered: Loki is easy to find, too easy. All twenty of him stand in a ring, looking up at Thor and, though the distance leaves him in silence, he knows they are all laughing again. Loki does not mean to run away.

Thor slams back toward the ground, the hammer more eager than he is. The whine of wind in his ears, the preparatory tensing of his muscles, and he lands with a colossal spray of sand that for an instant obscures Loki’s replicas from his view.

There’s no time to breathe or strategize before they’re closing in on him, and he swings Mjölnir widely, a swath of Loki’s images shimmering into nothingness upon contact with the uru. “Loki,” he snarls. It’s true that this is simpler, the uncertainty of his overtures toward reason forgotten.

There are too many of his brother, their smiles severe. Thor turns and turns again. “Show yourself!”

“You say you love me as a brother,” their voices, overlapped and mocking, intone, “and you cannot even find me to take your loving vengeance? For shame, thunderer.”

Thor plants his feet. This was a game mere years ago, nothing more, a chance for Loki to practice his illusions and for Thor to indulge his brother. Gritting his teeth, he swipes Mjölnir through another vision of Loki. He cannot tell if they’re multiplying or if there are simply too many for him to keep track.

He will find his brother.

“Must you make everything a game?” he calls. If Loki wants this, he will play along for the time being.

“Must you be so easy to fool?”

It isn’t one of Loki’s better barbs, and so Thor shrugs. “If it brings you pleasure, why should I stop?”

The smirks unfold one by one, a long row that Thor can follow with his eyes. He shivers, readjusts his grip on Mjölnir, and searches for that core of strength within him that can, when he concentrates, convince the skies to do his bidding. Each Loki is the same, illusory lips curving up without visible emotion. It bears almost no resemblance to the way Loki would laugh at his own pranks in the beginning, and—

“There you are,” Thor growls. Loki, not smiling, pale and tense. He does not look up, but Thor grabs at him anyway, takes hold of fistfuls of Loki’s shirt.

“Oh,” Loki says. He does smile now, thinly.

Thor expects Loki to fight, anticipates resistance, but instead there is just the falling and another spray of sand and Loki on his back _again_ , laughing up at him. “Brother,” Thor says, pausing with his hammer in position and entirely unsure. Thunder rumbles from far away, once called not so easy to dismiss.

The duplicates have gone and they are as they were, alone in this expanse of emptiness. It’s gotten dark with the gathering clouds, but the heat has yet to lift. They’re both breathing hard.

Loki gives no indication that he is bothered. “That _was_ quite a brotherly attack. I’m proud.”

“I am willing to stand against you.”

“So you have made clear.” Loki rolls out from under him like he’s made of water, springs easily to his feet. Without a weapon in hand he does not look dangerous, but Thor takes a fighting stance again regardless. “Where does that stop, I wonder?”

Thor begins to answer—and lightning strikes.

Though he is accustomed to the brightness and ready for this, Thor raises an arm, shields his eyes. In this dry air the heat of it feels _more_ , a flash of bright white power, and he’s shamefully gratified by Loki’s low, startled curse.

It does not singe Loki, but it comes close, closer than Thor realizes until it is too late, until he is wondering too viscerally what would happen if it did touch his brother. Loki stares at Thor with surprise for a fleeting moment, surrounded by the brittle glass reeds that have come of the union of Thor’s lightning and the desert sand. He steps back to a ringing chorus of high-pitched snapping, his fists balled at his sides again. “Artistic, Thor,” he says, low and quiet, “but not yet dangerous. Rather unlike you, really.”

“No?” Mjölnir is alight and Thor with it. He presses closer, uru’s surface crackling with electricity. “What must I do to prove myself, brother? If it is violence you wish to see from me, I am not afraid of you, but I will not sink so low as you might.”

“Superior as ever.” Loki sneers. He raises his hands and begins to move his lips, making no sound, and Thor is _afraid_ , too afraid that Loki will use the magic to disappear _again_ , that he’ll be forever and always at fault for the menace the god of lies can impose upon Midgard’s trusting fragility.

Thor does not think. He moves.

At the impact, Loki’s groan is guttural, and he goes flying. He is curled in on himself already, arms crossed over his midsection.

It takes Thor too long to understand what has happened. When he does, he drops Mjölnir and runs. He knows his own strength.

He sees this much: Loki is conscious, Loki is sitting up, Loki is laughing again, Loki’s eyes are wide and glassy. When Loki glimpses Thor, he grins a broad and toothy grin.

“As I said.” Thor is breathless as he crouches. “I am not afraid.”

“No,” Loki says. His mouth jerks up at the edges as if the smile is involuntary.

“If this is what will bring you back, somehow—”

“Somehow,” Loki repeats. “Are you surprised at yourself, Thor? That was not so painful, you know. Was that your great attack on me?”

“You would have me do more?” Thor asks disbelievingly. “Is it really me you wish to fight?”

Loki’s lip curls. “It has always been you. You _are_ blind.”

“I will not inflict your grudges on the innocents of Midgard,” Thor says, helpless. “If we must fight—” It’s the twitches at the corners of Loki’s mouth, the way his eyebrows quirk up, and Thor growls, low and feral in the back of his throat, and pitches forward, shoves Loki back into the sand with a visceral smack.

Loki’s hands do not move to make magic; there are none of the little twists and gestures Thor can recognize if not identify. Instead he hisses like the snakes he loves to conjure and wraps his fingers around Thor’s neck.

Thor is not fearful that Loki can hurt him like this. He is stronger, they both know it, and he’s out from under his brother’s grip before a minute has passed. It’s the icy blackness in Loki’s expression, the certainty with which he’d put pressure on Thor’s throat—that is what makes Thor choke and gasp for breath.

Angry now, enraged almost, he takes Loki by the shoulders and shakes, hard. “Stop,” he urges. “Stop, brother. I beg you.”

Now Loki’s heels dig into Thor’s calves, sharper than they should be, cold and getting colder, and Thor flinches. The twisting cage of his brother’s limbs is closing around him and he fights, not to escape it, only to slow its progress.

“This desert cannot hear you.” Loki speaks into Thor’s ear, his breath a cool premonition of winter. “It cares no more than I do.”

“You care,” Thor insists. The wiry muscles of Loki’s biceps give a little under his grip. “You care.” Saying it again and again is all he can think to do that may reshape Loki into the brother he knew. “You--”

That is when Loki bites.

Thor could almost mistake it for another blade, as abrupt and chilling as is the sensation. “Loki!” he says, hands pulling back with the surprise. But there is no telltale trickle of blood down his jaw or neck and he stops his accusation, uncomprehending.

With great satisfaction, Loki grins. “Thor,” he answers with widened eyes, pretending at innocence.

Thor swallows. He is too aware that their legs are entwined still. “You see why I think you mad,” he tries.

“You say you want a fight.”

“I have said no such thing—”

Quicker than Thor can finish, Loki has him—there’s a dizzying rush and he’s on his back with Loki above him. “Learn to stop saying things you don’t mean, then.” Loki’s face is too close to Thor’s, venom in his voice.

“Learn to _listen_ ,” Thor shoots back.

“Was it not you who freed me?” Loki pulls away, smooth incredulity lining his face. “You could have never heard me speak again, if that was your desire. Are you so indecisive?”

Thor cannot blame Loki for this. He knows what he is doing, feels the burn in the awkward tilt of his neck as he leans up, rolls the word around in his mouth before he spits it out: “No,” he growls, and kisses Loki, meaning it full well.

What ensues is not quiet listening. It is the sharp, sudden intake of ragged breath, the dry scrape of skin and cloth against sand, and Loki’s muffled laugh. It is Thor certain that Loki will disappear and his heart will stop and, when neither comes to pass, so seized with relief that he tugs his brother closer and kisses him again.

Loki’s mouth is hot against his own, as if all the warmth leached from the rest of his body has concentrated there, just to make Thor groan and shudder. Thor’s hands scrabble in the sand, seeking purchase that isn’t there, before they find Loki’s shoulders, anchoring him in place.

“You are a brute,” Loki accuses, which Thor cannot refute.

“Yes.” Thor winds a hand in Loki’s hair. To stop kissing him is to think, to worry, to marvel at himself; instead, he can concern himself with the taut line of Loki’s body against his own. The curve of the small of Loki’s back, the press and slide of Loki’s open mouth and panting breaths, the knots of tension that haven’t gone anywhere.

To stop might well be to let him go. And so Thor kisses him again, and yet again, and swallows the low sounds that Loki makes, and clutches the back of his neck so hard it would hurt a lesser being.

“Is this how you choose to silence me?” Loki means to sound haughty, perhaps—Thor knows him that well—but it’s breathless, a murmur into the dry air between them. “Or how you choose to punish me?”

“Neither.” Thor almost laughs. Loki’s pulse beats against his thumb.

Loki licks his lips. He is flushed, almost unkempt. “Do you desire my silence, or do you not?”

“I desire—” Thor stops himself, caught. The weight of Loki atop him makes him shudder again. “Only my brother,” he finishes. He will not be deterred by games.

“I see no brother of yours on this world.” There’s such derision in Loki’s voice that somehow it isn’t a surprise to feel his teeth again, sinking into the skin of Thor’s neck. Sharp hipbones, fingernails at Thor’s biceps, the sudden freeze of Loki’s tongue in the hollow of his throat—it’s an attack, all of it, and Thor lets his brother besiege him willingly. His head falls back, his eyes close. He wants to offer himself up, stand as the defending tower against the onslaught of Loki’s rage and hope that when the aftermath clears, he’ll be standing still to see what’s left.

Overhead, a distant crack of thunder rolls. Loki hesitates only for a moment, but it’s time enough for Thor to move, struggling to kneel. Like this, they’re almost of a height. Loki’s eyes are wide despite the irritated set of his jaw, and Thor can’t help the grin.

“Oh, is this a joke to you?” Loki sneers, or tries to.

“You accuse me of misunderstanding you,” Thor says quietly, “but you understand me no better, brother.”

Loki’s mouth twitches a little, a break in the calm face he still insists on wearing. “I will not be compared with a blundering oaf like—”

When Thor shoves him, Loki staggers backward, one knee buckling under him.

“We aren’t finished,” Thor says. He keeps his voice low and wills the clouds to linger in the sky. The darkness they provide makes the desert feel smaller, less alien, almost as if it could be closer to their home. “I will not back down from you.”

Loki takes fistfuls of Thor’s undershirt and drags himself close. “We’re at war, then, _still_ ,” he spits out.

“You’re at war,” Thor corrects. “The Avengers and I are entrusted with stopping you.”

This time, when Loki lunges at him, Thor is ready: he does not fall back, but takes hold of his brother. There is some softness, fleeting and almost imperceptible, around the edges of Loki’s mouth, and Loki does not move to call on his magic—and so Thor can grip his elbows, slide hands to his shoulders, feel the tension bristling from every sinew and every muscle.

“Haven’t you succeeded?” Loki’s eyes are dark. “What, have you brought me here to defeat me again? Are you already so fond of my humiliation that an Asgardian punishment would not satisfy your sense of—what is it, _justice_?”

“No,” Thor says, for the last time.

Loki is raw energy against him, sharp fingernails and sharper teeth, leaving Thor’s lips bruised and bleeding. When he fists a hand in the hair at the back of Loki’s neck, Thor is rewarded with a low groan, the sound so unpretentious, so close to open, that Thor pulls hard just to hear it again. Thor is starkly aware of the sweat drying under his arms and the overheated weight of his hair on his neck. Stubborn, he kisses Loki harder as the clouds above begin to scatter at last.

There comes the insistent tug of Loki’s hands at his undershirt. Thor pushes back and finds himself surprised by the way Loki almost yields under him, his only punishment the drag of fingernails down along his suddenly bare spine. The taste of Loki’s skin is comfortingly mundane, salty and cool against his tongue, and not even the shock of Loki’s cock hard against his inner thigh would be enough to make Thor stop.

“Oh,” Loki breathes. Only he could charge that ghost of a murmur with such vitriol, and it’s so typical that Thor simply laughs.

“You see, brother?” The sound of his own voice startles Thor, shaky and low as it is.

He does not give Loki the time to answer, afraid of what he will hear. It’s far easier to give into whatever this is, this fever the desert heat has awakened in his veins. The temperature makes the air seem to flicker around them and, Thor tells himself, none of this is real: not the broken sound he finds he can draw from Loki with a mere roll of his hips, not the mottled purple mark he sucks into the base of Loki’s throat, not the desperation of Loki’s hands decorating his hips with dark bruises.

Perhaps it is over too soon. It is Loki who goes still against him, back arching, both of them still half-clothed. He takes violent hold of Thor’s face, angling his jaw, to muffle that sound—too close to a whimper, that must be it—in the kind of kiss that Thor thinks surely must be meant for dark corners and dimly-lit bedchambers. Not the wide open sky of Midgard’s outdoors.

Thor’s fortitude is not so great as all that, no matter the boasting tales he has spun to his companions in the halls of Asgard. He does not return Loki’s kiss so much as gasp into his brother’s open mouth while he comes; already he can feel the smirk forming on Loki’s swollen lips.

It feels a great feat to pull away from the tangle of their shuddering limbs. Thor can feel the labored rise and fall of Loki’s chest. Even the god of lies must catch his breath, and Thor finds that he is smiling as he sits, trying not to notice the physicality of his movement, trying already to forget what has just passed between them.

Loki’s eyebrows arch, his lips pressing together. “Do you find something funny?” His gaze darts past Thor as if he is looking for something, already contemplating how best to rally and attack anew.

And Thor laughs, surprising even himself. “Look at yourself, brother,” he says.

Loki frowns, but does. Bruises dot his torso like the worlds on a map of Yggdrasil. Sand clings to his arms and mats his hair. Scratches whose origin Thor would rather not contemplate run down his sides.

“I’ve never seen you look so, not even after a true battle.”

Now it is Loki who laughs, incredulity transforming his features into something more familiar. He is flushed, eyes wide and dark and alien, but he looks like the brother Thor knows. “You would call that false? You never struck me as so callous.” The words are too close to a purr for Thor’s comfort.

“I—” Thor meets Loki’s gaze and pushes back the words he meant to say. “I suppose there is no word but ‘battle,’” he admits, aware in that instant of how quick his heart is beating even now.

When Thor stands and offers a hand, Loki takes it and lets Thor pull him to his feet. A moment passes and it is just as Thor’s fingers twitch to summon Mjölnir to him that Loki laughs again. “You fool,” he says, and Thor hopes he is not imagining that fleeting trace of fondness.

Without warning, they’re both laughing, the pair of them standing like nomads in the middle of nowhere. Unsure if he’s allowed to touch but unable to resist, Thor reaches to brush the sand from Loki’s upper arms, dragging fingers through the tangled strands of dark hair to set them aright. Loki sets a hand at his shoulder, ostensibly to keep himself upright, and Thor hardly notices when Mjölnir leaps back into his grip.

“That may be,” Thor allows with a sheepish chuckle. Loki’s palm is blessedly cold on his skin and he hesitates. “But I am not so stupid as all that,” he adds under his breath.

It is with a sinking feeling in his chest that Thor gathers the threadbare traces of what magic he has and, concentrating, pulls the handcuffs back into corporeality. The sight of them makes Loki step back, expression hardening.

“Ah,” he says coolly.

“Loki,” Thor counters, pleading.

“Thunderer.” Loki will not look at him, eyes trained instead, in seeming concentration, on something far away over Thor’s shoulder.

“Brother,” Thor says now, cupping the back of Loki’s neck with one hand. Though Loki goes tense under his palm, he glances back at Thor. A long moment passes. Expression unchanging, he holds out his hands.

 

Thor braces himself for the scrutiny of the Midgardian employee staffing the small motel he eventually finds half-hidden among the brush. Loki, at least, can make himself unseen and even complies with Thor’s request to do so, but Thor has never been gifted at such things. The screen flickering in the corner of the room, then, with its images of himself, of Loki, of his teammates, almost makes him start to laugh all over again. The young woman does not look away from the moving pictures as she accepts his false information, the bits of plastic he’s been told have currency in this realm, and slides something—a card—across the desk, and Thor feels relief that it bears such a resemblance to the so-called identification card Tony Stark proudly showed to him just before their parting.

The room is dingy, poorly-lit, and a little grimy. It bears no resemblance to their quarters back in Asgard, and Loki’s eyes narrow. He moves jerkily, forcing Thor to grab hold of the chain between his wrists and tug him along across the threshold like a reluctant bride.

“Is this not better than the outdoors?” Thor makes an awkward gesture to indicate the room.

Loki glares at him. “I’m not entirely certain that it is,” he says. His shoulders are hunched and his anger is nearly palpable.

“Please,” Thor says, perching at the edge of the too-small bed. “Better than whatever awaited you in Asgard, surely.”

Loki gives no indication that he has heard. Thor says his name, and then repeats it, while Loki ignores him in favor of studied contemplation of the beige bedspread on which he sits.

 

In the half-dark of the rented room that evening, Loki’s breathing is audible, a ragged in and out, in and out. Though they share the bed, Loki curls away from Thor, as close to the edge as he can make himself. Thor counts every twitch of Loki’s fingers. True, the humans say they are immortal, but in the fitful half-hours of sleep Thor manages, he can see only the seeming inevitability of Loki slipping away into nonexistence or into the well-guarded vaults of the All-Father’s dungeons.

They spend three agonizing days there, Thor only halfway through their stay coming to know that they are in the American state of California. They may as well be alone in the building, just the pair of them and the inattentive employees who float through with the slightest of acknowledgment. He becomes too familiar too quickly with the stale blandness of poorly-prepared Midgardian breakfast food, but eats nearly the entirety of the so-called continental breakfast each morning. Waffles are the least offensive.

Loki rarely speaks, and when he does it is to say something cutting before retreating into himself again. He allows Thor to clean him of the filth of the Mojave Desert, but with his chin tilted up and his eyes closed, the haughty prince unwilling to speak to the commoner tending to his baser needs.

“I meant only to spare you,” Thor tells him on the second night, a dispirited whisper across the distance between their pillows. He knows not to expect an answer, only the tightening of Loki’s shoulders as if the chains bind more than his wrists. Sometimes, maybe when he believes Thor is not listening, there comes a barely audible exhale, exasperated, like Loki is suppressing a longer response. That makes Thor smile, and it allows him to sleep.

There is little to do but sleep. Thor works out how to operate the screen that came with the purchase of the room, but everything that passes before them is insipid if not downright stupid. Loki gives him a poisonous stare the longer he works the television set, focused intently on the movements of Thor’s hands. Still, Thor leaves the chains and handcuffs in place.

Though Loki does not answer, Thor speaks to him whenever he can think of words that do not feel inadequate. “Do you remember the stories Mother used to tell us to soothe us out of our—your, I ought to say—mischief?” he’ll begin, and it’s easy to go from there. Countless decades stretch behind them; it takes little effort for Thor to recall the way they once were. There is so much more from which to choose there, more adventures and little jokes, that he can allow himself to believe their past eclipses the horrible, incongruous mundanity of their present.

“I did not give you your due that night once we returned home,” Thor is in the middle of saying, somber, to the faintest flicker of amusement in Loki’s eyes—and that is when the shrill sound of the telephone cuts into his words.

And it comes again, the high-pitched ringing impossibly loud in the oppressive quiet that has ruled over the room.

After the third ring, Loki quirks an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going to answer?”

The wry hoarseness of Loki’s disused voice, perhaps, is what startles Thor into response, more than the fourth ring of the telephone itself. Unsure, he picks up the device and holds it at an arm’s length from his face. He has seen his friends use similar technology—how far must he be to prevent the capture of any incriminating evidence?

As if from very far away, and perhaps it is, there is a familiar voice: “Thor? You there?”

Even Loki looks surprised. Thor slams the phone back into its cradle, and the plastic cracks down the middle. It works; Tony’s voice does not come again.

 

On the surface, at least, the next motel Thor hastily finds is of higher quality. The carpets look clean and that acrid scent does not linger so pervasively in _every_ room. He cannot say how far they have gone, only that he let Mjölnir take them as far north as he could stand the discomfort of carrying an uncooperative armful of Loki.

“Surely you do not always have that number of elbows,” he tells Loki as they trudge into their next nondescript room. Recalcitrant, yes, but Loki is not stupid, and he has obliged in disguising them enough to pass muster with the desk attendant, a brisk young woman a measure or two more competent than her predecessor.

The air here is cooler, and Loki does not flinch away the moment Thor touches him. And so Thor can hardly help himself, stroking a hand down the slight curve of Loki’s spine. He can feel the vertebrae through the thin fabric of Loki’s shirt and he smiles, unused to seeing his brother so long without the armor that characterizes the warriors and nobles of Asgard.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Loki tells him, looking up at Thor with something condescending twisting his expression.

“Have I ever said that I do?” Thor spreads his hands, helpless. “You’re my brother, Loki. If you’ve happened on a better plan—”

Loki rolls his eyes. “I’d just begun to prepare myself for eons of torture, you know,” he says, “and you seem disinclined to hand me back the reigns to this disgusting little world.”

“And—what? You’ll accept only extremes? You must rule or rot?”

“Anything else is pointless,” Loki says. The tone of his voice is icy, but he bows his head when Thor moves to brush the hair out of his eyes.

Just four hours have passed, the sunset still visible through the window, when the phone rings again. Thor does not answer this time, and Loki just laughs as Mjölnir smashes the bars on the window and they leave from the fifth floor.

 

Thor _must_ keep Loki safe and he must, _must_ keep him hidden. Not one human in Midgard can be blamed for wanting his brother dead, nor for wanting Loki sent to endure the punishment he has earned. He trusts the Avengers with his own life, but not with Loki’s, and he cannot be angry with them for it. It sits poorly with Thor, fleeing from his own team like he has done something unforgivable. It may be that he has.

The next time, he tries not answering.

The telephone rings over and over, and when Thor glances to Loki for help he receives only a look of purest disdain.

With time, the sound stops. Thor lets out a long-held breath. The absurdity of this is surely too much, two Asgardian princes shut up in an ugly room and surrounded by little but cheap knick-knacks and the worst Earth’s cuisine has to offer.

Loki sits cross-legged at the head of the bed, placidly observing as Thor runs hands through his hair and tries to square his shoulders. “I should have known you would be so unprepared,” he says.

“I am not too proud to accept suggestions,” Thor answers, sinking into a small chair. Its plastic groans for a moment under his weight.

“And you ought to know I’m not eager to help you.”

Was Loki always this exasperating? “All this is for your own benefit, brother.”

“Ah, is it?” Loki purses his lips, casting a disparaging glance from corner to corner. “Truly, it’s lucky I have you here to help me. Such luxury and recreation do not bless every former king, do they?”

Thor can do nothing but sigh and lean his elbows on the rickety table near him. After just under a week, it seems he can feel his muscles softening and his instincts slipping away. He imagines the taunts Iron Man would throw his way and has begun to laugh—under Loki’s withering disapproval—when the telephone rings one more time.

Thor’s halfway through reaching to pick it up when he glances to Loki. Loki raises his shackled wrists, features blank, cool as a sheet of ice in winter. “Regrettably, I cannot stop you,” he drawls. The effect is only a little spoiled by the second piercing trill of the telephone.

Unsure of the protocol—particularly here, a situation that must be unusual even in this odd realm—Thor holds the phone to his ear. “Yes,” he ventures, careful not to say his name. Caution does not come naturally to him, but perhaps he can learn.

Immediately there is a confused rush of familiar voices:

“Thor?” Measured but urgent. It must be Steve.

And—“Where the _hell_ are you? Are there hallucinogens in that cube?”

That, of course, is Tony Stark.

Natasha’s voice comes through clear and calm, just as if she is telling him again about how one of her missions with Clint has gone. “Thor, if you’re in danger, I need you to let me know. Now.”

Before he can stop himself, Thor’s gaze has landed on Loki, whose tightened jaw makes it clear he can hear every word coming across the line.

“I am not in danger, friends,” Thor hastens to assure the Avengers. “Please—do not think to worry about me. There are far greater causes on which to expend your talents.”

“Are you kidding me?” Those words are muffled, and it takes Thor only a moment to identify the speaker as Hawkeye himself.

“Look.” Steve again. “You were supposed to end up in Asgard. We didn’t think anything of it for a while, you know. We were going our separate ways.”

“Not _that_ separate,” Tony cuts in. “It takes less than a second for me to let everyone know now when something is wrong. Unless,” he adds ominously, “I held off on giving one of you his Avengers ID card because I thought you were, I don’t know, going to be _in a different dimension_.”

Thor can’t think of what to say. How can he apologize? But—how can he explain himself to these allies of his? They are ferociously loyal and headstrong, after all, as he well knows. That is part of what he finds so admirable about them.

“Come on, Thor,” Tony says. The playfulness of his tone is a mere veneer, and Thor knows he is willing to push much harder than this. “We need to know why you’re still on Earth.”

“I—” Thor is not used to lying and hoped he would never need to pick up the skill. Loki has always been there to form eloquent words and wield the finer points of language when he has needed that advantage. Now his brother only stares at him with growing amusement dark in his eyes.

Thor takes a measured breath. “I promise you, I am safe,” he says into the telephone.

“Right,” Tony answers with obvious irritation. “So tell us where you are and which of our growing—way too fast, I might add—list of enemies is keeping you there. I’m pretty sure you don’t think we’re stupid.”

“Friends,” Thor says, unwilling to give up so quickly. “I beg you, do not concern yourselves. I—believe me, I am safe where I am.” At the least, he does not believe Loki could harm him in any lasting way.

“Thor, we can’t leave it at that.” It takes Thor a moment to place the speaker—Bruce Banner, who else? “And we have ways of looking for you. _I_ have ways.”

“I believe that you can. And I ask you to believe that I have no need of your help.” Though he longs to hear the Avengers’ voices, to ask each of them how they are recovering in the aftermath of the chaos sowed by the smirking god of lies not two yards from him, Thor summons his conviction and returns the telephone to its base. This time he is careful, and the plastic stays intact.

He had come close to forgetting what it could be to hear anyone else’s voice, so long has he been throwing his pleas against the closed door of Loki’s disapproval. Now, though—Thor finds himself rising from his seat, feeling much too large for the cramped room, and realizing that he has never seen that expression on his brother’s face. The contemptuous curve to his eyebrows, yes, and the laughing quirk to his lips, and even the surprised tilt to his head—but never like this.

“Loki?” he says quietly as he takes a halting step closer.

“Have you been _lying_ , brother?” Loki asks, laughter barely contained behind his voice.

“Badly,” Thor confesses. He smiles, can’t help himself.

“Ah, that’s a given.” Loki shifts to sit upright, the motion awkward with his limbs constricted. “I’ve rarely had the misfortune to hear a worse liar.”

Thor lets himself sit by Loki, his added weight jostling the mattress. “I haven’t had your practice,” he protests, “and I—Loki, you know that I tried. You know why.”

It may be that something softens around the sharp edges of Loki’s features, a flash of indulgence. “Can it have anything to do with your justification for keeping me in chains?” His tone does not match the confrontation in his words.

Undeterred, Thor reaches for Loki’s hands. The long fingers unfold under his touch, splayed out palely across the dark fabric of Loki’s trousers. Loki neither fights him or helps him, watching while Thor runs his thumb across lightly callused palms, picks up and weighs bony wrists, looking to be certain there is no damage.

“It gives me no pleasure to see this,” he says, turning one hand over in his. It feels delicate in his grasp, though Loki is far from small or fragile. Small for a jötunn, maybe; the thought, the image of Loki with blue skin, comes surprisingly easily. “I know what you can do with these.”

Loki seems to scoff. “You _are_ trying to help, aren’t you?” He says it like he is discovering this for the first time, all sarcastic disbelief.

“I’ve said so, Loki.” Thor frowns at him, grip tightening on one wrist. “Did you listen to me?”

“I’m not deaf,” Loki snaps.

Under Thor’s thumb, Loki’s pulse is quickening. “I’ve come too far to give you up to anyone else now,” Thor tells him. One hand strokes the hair curling over Loki’s collar. They have touched so little these past long days, he wants to pull Loki against him and—what? Crush him in a hug, shake him to see if that sets his mind aright? What else is there?

“Must I remain kept?” Loki’s mouth is set in a firm line, but his eyes are wide and it’s a simple matter to forget what he has become and remember the brother he used to be. “I, too, have come too far.”

“You’re not safe, brother.” It could mean anything: not safe from others, not safe in Asgard, not safe for the population of Midgard. Determined, Thor squeezes the back of Loki’s neck; Loki once found it a reassuring gesture, or at least indulged Thor in claiming so.

“No,” Loki agrees, an echo of Thor’s protests in the desert. It must be deliberate. He flashes a sudden grin, daring Thor to remark on this corollary, and leans closer. “I’m not safe at all,” he says. And he kisses Thor.

The touch of Loki’s lips is light, so gentle that, for a foolish split second, Thor does not understand what his brother is doing. The floor seems to tilt, then, and he’s leaning closer just to be sure he’s truly here in this moment. Loki’s low, derisive laugh hums against Thor’s closed mouth and there isn’t anything for it but to kiss him back.

Under his hand, Thor feels Loki trying to tug at his chains, tries to ignore the accompanying whine of frustration. “Thor, please,” Loki murmurs, letting the words nearly disappear in the barely-there distance from his mouth to Thor’s.

“Brother, I can’t.”

Loki bites Thor’s lower lip. The muscles in his neck tense as he struggles against the handcuffs and when Thor shifts away in surprise at the dull pain, he finds himself watching the fluttering movements of Loki’s throat with fascination.

“I believe you mean that you _won’t_ ,” Loki says.

“That may be,” Thor answers slowly. “Restraining you requires little justification, however.”

Loki’s eyes flick up, either in annoyance or a consideration of the hypothetical judgment Asgard might pass upon him—if that is indeed the proper direction to look. “You and Odin agree in that much, I’m sure,” he says, the words clipped. When he kisses Thor again, it isn’t so surprising as it might have once been; they haven’t anywhere else to go, nor anything else to say.

Here, though, there’s territory left unexplored: Thor seizes Loki by the shoulders, kissing him hard, pushing him back against the lumpy mattress. For an instant he fears he’s even lost Loki here, but it’s only an instant, and then Loki strains against him, mouth open and even warm against his own. Thor’s hands wind into Loki’s hair, tugging, and he cannot deny how much he likes the way Loki’s back arches in response, the ferocity with which he kisses harder, deeper.

Loki fits well under Thor, long legs winding around Thor’s hips. Thor growls, holds him down all over again, bites just under Loki’s ear and sucks on the skin. The taste of sweat is gratifying, if no more so than the curve of Loki’s neck with his head thrown back, and Loki is nearly _squirming_ below Thor, hard already and panting as he manages to pull Thor flush against him with nothing more than the insistent crook of his ankle.

“Loki,” Thor breathes. His fingers are shaking as he cups Loki’s face in his hands.

And Loki smiles. “I see you haven’t entirely lost your ability to rebel,” he says, leaning up to kiss Thor again.

Thor shudders and kisses back and doesn’t even mind it when Loki bites this time and—

The door slams open. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“Oh—oh my.” With that tone, it cannot be anyone but Steve Rogers.

“Yeah, that’s a nice way of putting it,” Tony says.

Thor has barely had time to spring back from Loki when the arrow slices through the air just inches from him and he’s jumping to his feet, back to the wall. “Who dares attack the sons of Odin?” he demands.

Improbably, perched above the doorway that’s framing the other four Avengers, Clint waves. He is not smiling; rather, his expression is grim, and it chills Thor to see.

“What are you _thinking_ , Hawkeye?”

“Hey, I’m being nice,” Clint says, tone steely. “See?”

Loki is breathing fast, still stretched out on the bed, but there is no arrow in him. The fletching quivers, the shaft embedded in the sheets and clear through to the mattress. The hardness in Loki’s eyes makes Thor look away fast, but there isn’t anywhere to take his gaze, not when Natasha is far too close and she has rarely appeared less happy with him.

“You tell us what this is about,” she says, calm, as if correcting his stance during a round of sparring.

“Please, friends,” Thor starts. Natasha rolls her eyes, but she remains where she stands and Clint’s arrows do not leave his well-stocked quiver.

“Let him _go_.”

Thor doesn’t initially realize that Clint is speaking not to him, but to Loki, not until he looks up once more and sees the raw anger in Hawkeye’s expression. He glances away hastily, skin prickling with something that may well be shame.

“It is not he who holds me,” he tells Clint. “Do you not see his bonds?”

“Yeah, looks like you lost a couple of ‘em,” Clint says.

“Just—don’t shoot just yet, Hawkeye,” Steve says, crossing into the room. His brow furrows as he studies Loki, who manages to struggle into a kneeling position, hair mussed and features blank. “Thor must have an explanation for this.”

“Look at me.” It is less a struggle to meet Steve’s gaze, to make and keep eye contact with Captain America. “He is using no trickery on me. I am here of my own free will, Steven.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth quirks up, a passing instant, but it warms Thor to see it. “I see that, Thor,” he says. He frowns as he looks back at Loki, who merely sneers.

“Brother,” Thor murmurs. When he puts a hand on Loki’s shoulder, it’s frigid through the thin, now-ragged undershirt. “Friends,” he repeats, louder, “I ask that you trust in me. Believe that I am myself, and that my brother is—he is under my control.”

“Then why is he still _alive_?” Clint demands.

“It does seem like our work’s a little, uh, invalidated,” Bruce says, quiet, almost unnoticed. He leans against the doorframe. He’s remarkably skilled at hiding the tension that defines his every nerve and muscle.

“I—” Can that be frost creeping up his fingertips? Loki smirks, and Thor squeezes his shoulder harder. “He is my brother,” he declares. The words fall flat in the suddenly-crowded room.

“You’ve tried that one already.” Thor has rarely seen Natasha look less impressed. “Nothing has changed. He’s only killed _more_. What do you expect us to believe?”

“I cannot ask you for faith in him,” Thor starts. A too-clever response from Loki seems inevitable and when none comes, he looks down at his little brother. Just to be certain he remains conscious.

Loki raises his eyebrows. “What would you have me contribute?”

Thor takes a deep breath.

“Hey, you can save the explanation of the making out for later,” Tony volunteers. “We’re gonna need a drink or seven for that. Each.”

“Make mine absinthe,” Clint says.

Thor breathes again. “I mean to say that—I cannot ask you for faith in him because I have little of that myself.” In the fingertips still spread against the back of Loki’s neck, he feels the tremor of a suppressed laugh. “But I would ask you to have faith in me, as a son of Odin, as a prince of Asgard, and as your friend.”

There is a subsequent hush, and Thor uses it to straighten his spine, to square his shoulders. “Please,” he says again. “There is no excusing what my brother has done. But it is not justice to lock him away to suffer until Ragnarok. You have said yourself that he is not in his right mind.”

“Understatement,” Bruce mutters.

“If you had known him as I do,” Thor tries, “if you had seen the way he was before—”

“Thor, we understand.” Steve cuts him off, quick and decisive. “You can’t think clearly about this.”

“Hardly,” Thor allows. “But if you can see your way to—a chance, perhaps. Nothing more than that.”

He is sure he can _hear_ Clint grinding his teeth, can hear Natasha tightening her grip on one of her many knives.

“I will not leave his side,” Thor adds, voice lower. “I cannot see my brother put to such pain when I know—I know the Loki I knew has not gone completely. When I have seen him.”

“Among other things, I bet—”

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve warns, and he smiles at Thor. “Avengers, stand down.”

Thor feels nearly weak with relief.

“But don’t,” Steve adds, all Captain America again, “let him out of those cuffs.”

 

Thor marvels still at the speed of Midgardian technology under Tony Stark’s watch; by the time he has, with the ease of practice, helped the still-handcuffed Loki back into his armor and done the same for himself, one of Stark Industries’ large aircraft is touching down outside the motel. He ignores the looks on the faces of the employees as he tugs Loki out through the lobby.

They are flanked by Avengers, all—even Steve—with suspicion in their eyes. But they are _there_ , and Thor is glad for it. He is glad even for the scornful way Clint brushes past him and the wariness with which Natasha precedes them out of the building.

“Did I not tell you I meant to help, brother?”

“Ah, your definition of helping is as loose as Fandral’s morals,” Loki answers dryly.

Thor simply laughs. “This is better than what Asgard had in store for you and surely you know it,” he says. He slings an arm around Loki’s shoulders and tugs him closer, just for a moment.

It is at the firm pressure of Loki’s hand at the small of his back that Thor’s blood runs suddenly cold.

“Loki—”

He steps away, glances down. Sure enough, the shackles are bound to Loki’s wrists, tight as ever. He has grown used to the sight of them, discomfiting though that is.

“Loki,” Thor repeats, warningly.

Loki meets his gaze and gives him a toothy smile. “Come along, brother. Your friends are waiting.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for Peri's Attack Again at Dawn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/564910) by [twelvegullies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twelvegullies/pseuds/twelvegullies)




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